


One Man's Trash

by EmiWanKenobi



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Angst, Dogmeat (character), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, M/M, Nick Valentine (character), Paladin Danse (character), Piper Write (character), Robert Joseph MacCready (character), btw Shaun is Roy's godson and Nate was his childhood BFF (just in case anyone was curious), yeah this is inspired by that, you know all those comments your companions make when you pick up anything?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-26 03:58:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14992250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmiWanKenobi/pseuds/EmiWanKenobi
Summary: ...Is another man's treasure.Roy's been collecting things since the day he walked out of Vault 111. Model cars, old cameras, toy rockets and teddy bears that he's saving for when they finally find Shaun. He's just trying to hold onto a piece of the life he left behind, when everything was shining and new and not 200 years old and crumbling under the rubble the bombs left behind.





	One Man's Trash

**Author's Note:**

> I had the idea for this fic well over a year ago, not too long after I first started the game. It seemed like every companion had something to say whenever your Sole picked something up, and somehow those comments inspired this. Because to them it's just junk, but to my Sole, it's pieces of his life before the bombs and the Vault. I've written at it and written at it and left it to languish on my hard drive for months, and now I'm finally posting it.

He’d started collecting things on a whim not too many days after escaping Vault 111. Never anything major, always just whatever happened to catch his eye. Old tools, tattered comic books, game cartridges, figurines. Useful things and familiar things from before the war and the vault.

One afternoon it was toy car. Rusted, but with enough paint left that he could tell it had once been blue. The wheels were still attached and still spun when he ran his fingers over them. It reminded him of a model he used to have back in his apartment, one of a dozen metal cars put together from kits he used to buy. He even used to have one that he’d first bought as a kid. He and Nate used to build them and race them down the streets, setting up finish lines with chalk or string and making a ruckus as their cars zipped down the hill.

It was a memory both sweet and sad, and brought both fondness and grief and as he turned the toy in his hand.

He had been staring at the toy for a little too long when he heard the scuff of shoes from behind him, followed by a chuckle. He had almost forgotten that he wasn’t alone. He cast a glance over his shoulder as Nick stuck his hands in his pockets. “Got a thing for antiques, huh?” the detective asked, not at all unkindly.

Roy could hear the teasing in Nick’s voice, knew the detective was referring to himself as much as the rusted toy, and he laughed. But there was something troubled in it as he looked down at the car. Antiques? Yeah, that sounded about right. Bits and pieces of history two hundred and something years old. Never mind that in his memories most of this stuff had been new and shining a few weeks ago.

The thought came unbidden, and brought with it a wry smile: if things from his time were antiques, what did that make him?

For a moment the thought made something inside him throb painfully, and he struggled to dismiss it. With a shake to get rid of the melancholy Roy chuckled again. “Yeah, I guess I do,” he answered as he dropped the toy into his bag. Nick didn’t comment on his keeping it, which he appreciated as he turned back and flashed the detective a smile. “C’mon, let’s keep moving.”

* * *

He found the camera in a busted up shop in Lexington. It was an old Prosnap, complete with the flash extension, the lenses still intact. A little rusty and beat up, the flashbulb was missing and he would never find any film for it, but it didn’t rattle when he gave it a tentative shake. It was mostly intact, almost like it had been untouched since the day the bombs dropped.

“Look at this!” He exclaimed, quietly and mostly to himself. He fiddled with the film compartment - empty, as expected, but that was okay.

Beside him Piper swung into his field of view, her arms crossed as she looked at the camera. She obviously didn’t get his enthusiasm.

“Come on, aren’t you at least a little interested?” Roy prompted, and knew he sounded a little disappointed by her lack of care. He thought it was a pretty good find. “You know journalists used to carry these things around when they’d go out for a hot scoop.”

“Yeah?” Piper asked, taking the camera like it was an oddity. She gave the little machine a once over, even lifting the else to her eye before handing it back. “Not worth much now though,“ she said. "Doesn’t even work.”

Still disappointed but resigned to enjoying his find alone, Roy took it from her carefully and tugged a spare shirt out of his bag to wrap it in. He didn’t want it getting smashed up if he had to run from something large and radioactive. Again.

“You bringing it with you?” Piper asked. She was already at the window of the store, ready to climb back out and keep moving.

“Yeah…?” Roy frowned at her. “Why?”

Piper shrugged her shoulders. “No reason. I just don’t know why you’d want to carry around all that old junk.”

Roy’s mouth twisted into a grimace, which he tried to twist further into a smile. “One man’s trash,” he quoted, aiming to be playful as he shrugged his bag into place.

Piper laughed. “Yeah, if you say so,” she said, still not understanding, but ready to drop the subject. “Anyway, you coming or what?”

With his shoulders dropping Roy turned to follow her. “Yeah, I’m coming.”

* * *

 “You going to sell all that or something?”

Roy sighed when the question came, glad that his back was to MacCready. He had expected something like it, but come on. Was everyone going to mention it every time he found something? Roy had hoped that at least the kid would have some kind of understanding, given his soft spot for old comics. Or at least he’d hoped that he wouldn’t bring it up.

Jangles the Space Monkey looked up at him, big eyes, plastic helmet, looking worn and dirty and a little worse for the wear. It was half as pristine as the identical Jangles the Space Monkey he’d bought when he’d found out he was going to be a godfather, but that one had disappeared from the house in Sanctuary Hills a long time ago. This one was just a best option replacement. Not that he saw a point in explaining that to MacCready.

“Not all of it,” he answered instead, as he brushed some dust from the stuffed animal’s cloth and faux-leather body before tucking it carefully away. Sure, some of the stuff he would sell; he could get a few caps for the tools he had stuffed in the bottom of the bag. And he had a bucket of green paint for that guy in Diamond City. But no, he wasn’t going to sell all of it.

“If you’re not going to sell it then what’s it for?” MacCready asked.

Roy shrugged. “I just like it,” he said.

MacCready stared at him for a moment, and finally shrugged his own dismissal. “As long as I don’t have to help carry it.”

With his eyes downwards Roy shouldered past him, replying with nothing beyond a clipped, “I didn’t ask you to.”

* * *

“If you keep trying to carry all that you’ll only slow us down.”

Roy’s shoulders tensed as he swung his bag back onto his shoulder, guiltily listening to the clank of metal inside. Sure, some of the stuff he had picked up was heavy, but they were only a couple of hours from home and he didn’t mind holding onto it for that long.

Danse stood watching him, wearing his usual stern frown and clearly disapproving.

It rubbed Roy the wrong way, making the skin up his spine crawl and a sharp retort to slip to his tongue. He had to bite down his frustration and disappointment, swallowing it before he could say something he’d regret. He was tired of trying to make people understand anyway. They could all just leave him alone.

“I won’t let it slow us down,” he said, shifting his bag and taking a step past Danse to continue down the road.

He could almost taste Danse’s disapproval as it radiated off the Paladin, getting stronger with every clank and clunk of junk that rattled around in the bag on Roy’s back.

The disapproval followed him all the way back to Sanctuary.

* * *

Roy was grateful for the silence as he loaded up the left front leg of a Giddyup Buttercup into his well worn bag. He already had both back legs and the head back at the Red Rocket, cleaned up and stored away until he had all the parts. He thought if he could find everything he could put it together for Shaun. Even if his godson ended up being too big to ride it by the time they found him, it might still be nice to have it.

If Shaun didn’t want it, Roy had been collecting plenty of toy cars and rockets too. Just in case.

As he finished tucking the metal leg away he felt a nudge against his own leg, and a tug on his jeans that drew him to look down. Dogmeat looked up at him with his tail wagging and a soft whine.

“Easy, Dogmeat,” Roy murmured, taking a moment to scratch him behind the ears. Dogmeat’s tail beat against the wall in a staccato thump, just happy to be given attention. There was no judgement about the added weight coming from him. Ridiculously grateful for the lack of commentary Roy crouched down to be on his level, and lovingly nuzzled his head. “You don’t mind when I carry home a little extra, do you, boy?” he asked, and received a loving snuffle with a wet nose in answer.

“Thanks, boy.”

* * *

 It was already a bad day when he and Preston found the abandoned neighborhood not too far south of the Starlight Drive-In. They’d been out since sunrise, been caught in a radstorm, and had added nearly two hours to their trip trying to circumnavigate to avoid ghouls and a radscorpion nest.

It had just been a long day, in a long week, in a long few months, and Roy was starting to feel it.

He shouldn’t have snapped, he knew that. But when he picked up the vase, barely chipped and only slightly yellowed, with blue flowers painted on it that he knew Val would love, he’d already been tense, ready for the criticism that nearly all of his companions seemed to have.

He actually managed to get the vase wrapped up safely for protection before Preston’s voice broke the stillness.

“You sure we need that?” he questioned, watching Roy with his brows raised. When Roy didn’t answer he pressed on with a slight frown, “I guess you know what you’re doing, but that just looks like junk to me.”

It was too much. Roy’s breath left him in a rush and he stuffed the vase in his bag before blindly snatching up whatever other piece of - junk, scrap, trash, he _got it_ , alright? - was sitting in front of him.

“Sturges said he needed spare parts for the turret,” he answered, and it came out sharp and jaded in a way he hadn’t intended. He spun on his heel and raced his way outside, blindly stalking out into the quiet, broken lane between the dilapidated buildings.

He didn’t go far; even upset, instinct keeping him close to the cover of the house, relatively safe from anything that might be lurking. Only a few yards from the door saw him coming to a halt, breathing hard, anger and hurt and something heavier than both pressing in on his chest. 

_Overreacting_ , one part of his brain supplied. Getting upset over old forgotten things. It wasn’t like him, he shouldn’t let it bother him.

He just wished that someone would at least try to understand.

He looked down at the object in his hand, only for the first time really noticing what it was. An old alarm clock, ornate but tarnished. Not even good enough junk for the turret after all, unless Sturges wanted to make the rotating gun tell time.

Roy looked over the useless decoration, batteries long dead, hands frozen in time. He wondered if it had stopped working when the bombs dropped, or if it had kept ticking on until it ran out of juice. Either way it wasn’t much good for anything now. None of it was. Not the vase, the clock, the toy cars or the cameras or the ugly stuffed monkey. With a choke he dropped his hand and stared at the ground, his breath a shaking stutter every time he drew it in.

Behind him the sound of footsteps came; rushing at first, then tentative and slow the nearer they came to him. Roy didn’t turn or look up to acknowledge them, not worried about ghouls or thieves or any other danger. He knew it was just Preston.

The footsteps kept coming, hesitant as they got closer, until they stopped altogether. A beat of silence passed. Roy kept his eyes on the ground.

“Hey, you okay? What’s wrong?”

Roy closed his eyes and heaved a sigh. _Yes, no, nothing, everything_. He tried to say them all but instead just shook his head, shoulders hunching as he wrapped in on himself.

Preston stepped closer, reached out, put a hand on his arm. When that wasn’t enough to make Roy look up he moved around to stand in front of him, concern and confusion in his eyes. He had messed up, which was obvious, though he wasn’t exactly sure how. Standing toe to toe he put his hand to Roy’s cheek to try and turn his eyes up. “Babe,” he prompted, keeping his touch gentle, his voice soft. “What’s going on? Talk to me.”

Roy gripped the clock so tightly his knuckles went white. He thought of a million ways to react, to brush it off, to keep going like it was no big deal. Laughing, apologizing, blaming it on a long day. Preston probably would have believed it. He meant to say or do any of that, but when he opened his mouth the only words that came were, “It’s not junk.”

Preston was silent, uncertain, still confused. It was a few seconds before he spoke again. “Okay,” he said. “This is about the vase? I wasn’t trying to upset you. Honestly it just seemed like a waste to carry, I didn’t mean—”

“I know you didn’t. I know. You don’t get it,” Roy said. It came out sounding ragged. “I know it doesn’t make sense to _any_ of you. To you guys it’a junk. All you see is scrap and trash, but to me it’s—” he fumbled, voice cracking, and he was quieter when he continued. “It’s all that’s left.”

Preston’s silence was more pained this time, understanding slowly but finally beginning to dawn. He was trying to find the right words, something of comfort to say, and was coming up miserably empty. “Roy—”

“I remember when this was all new,” Roy interrupted. Now that the words had started he had to get them all out. “I had stuff like this at home, back before the bombs dropped and before I woke up to a post-war nightmare where everything is rubble. And I… I’m not asking you to admire it, or to appreciate it, or to help me drag it all home,” he said. He’d never asked any of them to help, he just wanted them to not jump him for it every time. Just wanted some support, even if he couldn’t have their understanding. “I’m trying to hold on to what’s left,” he finished. “Even if what's left is junk I pick up out of the rubble.”

The clock in his hands was shaking and he belatedly realized it was because his hands were trembling. He did his best to go still, keeping his eyes downwards rather than looking up at Preston. Silence fell between them again, heavy and unbroken except for the occasional creak or rustle of the dead neighborhood. Roy stood there worn out and raw and waiting, wishing he’d said something sooner, and also that he hadn’t said it at all. 

Eventually, after a very long time or a very short time - Roy wasn’t sure which it was - the silence ended. Preston was slow and steady as he leaned in close, removing any distance between them. He put his hands on Roy’s elbows and stepped into his space, nudging their foreheads together. “Okay,” he said, simple and quiet.

Roy finally looked up at him, uncertain and confused. “Okay?” he echoed. Like it was just that simple.

“Okay,” Preston confirmed, nodding and pressing a kiss to Roy’s forehead.

With a myriad of emotions, self-consciousness, relief, homesickness, Roy looked away again, sinking into Preston’s arms and hiding his face in his shoulder. He swallowed past the lump building in his throat. “I knows it’s stupid,” he muttered. “I just don’t know what else to do.”

“It’s not stupid.” Preston shook his head and held Roy tightly. “I didn’t realize it meant so much to you, but I should have been able to figure it out. I’m sorry,” he said. After a minute he pulled back, only going far enough to gently nudging Roy’s chin and look him in the eye. “If this is what you need then I got you, okay?”

Roy met his eyes uncertainly, still feeling embarrassed under the soft look. “I’m sorry I—”

“Hey.” Preston interrupted him with a shake of his head. “I got you,” he insisted. “Okay?”

With a nod Roy replied; “Okay.”

“Good.” Preston kissed his cheek before he pulled back further. They couldn’t afford to stand there in the open forever, regardless of how much either might wish to. “Now I’ll help you carry back whatever you want,” Preston promised, and flashed a playful smile. “Unless it’s something huge, like an old car or something. I’m gonna have to draw the line with that.”

The joke finally drew a smile from Roy, and then a quiet chuckle. “Nah, don’t worry. I usually just bring car parts in one at a time,” he assured. He felt lighter than he had in days, his chest no longer tight and weighted. He felt like he could actually breathe again. “In ten or fifteen years I’ll have enough of one put together to take you joyriding. It’s going to be great.”

Preston laughed and bumped shoulders with him as he moved to stand behind him. “I'm looking forward to it,” he said. He reached out and laced his fingers with Roy’s, squeezing gently. “Come on, General. Let’s get back home.”

Roy took a deep breath and turned to follow him, boots crunching over the broken concrete of the street. With one hand he still held on to Preston, and in the other the alarm clock still rested. After a few steps further he carefully tucked the latter into his bag, nestled safely atop the vase.

He knew, deep down, that it _was_ only junk. One of these days he would be ready to accept that, ready to let the past go and move on with the future. He was already on that path now, moving on into a new life with Preston and the rest of their hodge-podge family in Sanctuary Hills. In the meantime, though, he would keep hold of whatever memories he could get his hands on.

And as long as he had something to hold on to, in the past, the future, or both, he knew he would be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Consider leaving a comment if you enjoyed it? Kudos are cupcakes and comments are love.


End file.
